Beautiful Red

I am hooked and waiting on new episodes for Beautiful Red podcast by Darusha Wehm, hosted at podiobooks. I started listening and before I knew it I had listened to all 6 episodes which have been released so far, and am anxiously waiting for more episodes to be released. The story is set in a near future Technical Utopia, where technology has made crime mostly irrelevant. But then you start to be immersed in this technological utopia, and start to see some of the cracks where everything is not so nice and utopian.

Great science fiction podcast!

Nathen Lowell Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series

Recently I've been listening to several books posted on Podiobooks. This week I'll tell you a bit about Nathen Lowell's series Quarter Share, Half Share, and Full Share. Which is a series of Trader's Tales from the Golden Age of the Solar Clipper. His website at http://durandus.org/golden/ provides even more tidbits and supporting information about the stories. The first book Quarter Share, you are introduced to Ishmael who through an unfortunate accident finds himself in need of a way off the planet and in need of work. He finds it in the form of a job on a solar trading clipper ship the "Lois McKendrick" as a mess attendant, in the galley. I found myself drawn in by Nathen Lowell's writing style which just draws you in and holds you transfixed while you feel like you are actually there sitting at the pub listening to the story unfolding. I don't think I'm alone after hearing that Quarter share was nominated for a Parsec Award in Best Speculative Fiction Story (Novel Form).

I would have to say these stories have been of the type that you can't put down. I have listened through all three of his podiobooks multiple times now, and am waiting for the final episode of Full-share to be released. Then I will truly be in withdraw till the spring of 2008 when he expects the next book in the series to approach completion and release on podiobooks.

Good Story and Science Fiction/Fantasy Podcasts

The top list of good podcasts that I currently follow are:

• Geek Fu Action Grip by Mur Lafferty
• Heaven all three seasons (heaven, hell, and Earth) by Mur Lafferty
• 7th Son by J.C. Hutchins
• Singularity by Bill DeSmedt
• Cory Doctrow's Craphound podcast
• MOREVI: The Chronicles of Rafe and Askana by Tee Morris and Lisa Lee
• Spherical Tomi: A Novel of Despair by Jack Mangan

Escape Pod: The Shoulders of Giants

Just listened to EP078: The Shoulders of Giants by Robert J. Sawyer from Escape Pod, and I just loved the story. I actually listened to the story twice on my daily commute. It is a story about a colony sleeper ship who was headed for Tau Ceti, where they hoped to colonize the planet there. Their travels took them 1200 year, and by the time they did get there they were greeted by a thriving community from earth. They were honored as being among the giants that helped the community actually get there and expand. The end of it puts a new perspective to life and accomplishments that can be made.

I, Row-Boat

I, Row-Boat was a very interesting story, I first listened to it when Cory Doctorow read the story on the craphound podcast a while back. You can listen to the podcasts of the story part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4. I was fascinated by the story and read it again, you can find the story as published on flurb.net . It is a story from after the emergence of AI and it follows a rowboat which has gained self-awareness. The rowboat is part of a scuba diving cruise ship, where people can project into one of the several human shells on the ship and experience scuba diving along the corral reefs. I greatly enjoyed the short story and loved it.

Tomorrow the Future

Ever get into the discussions of what tomorrow might bring and what technology might look like in 5, 10, or even 20 year? Slashdot had an article today "No More Coding From Scratch?" and that tied in with lunch discussion today. What will technology look like in 10-20 years? With Moore's Law technology has been increasing at a very rapid pace. Will we see a Technological Singularity within our lifetime? (for good or bad)

What type of computer interface will you be using in 10 years? Voice interface, dynamic reconfigurable and adaptive displays? We already have multi-touch displays which have been prototyped, and another here.

hmmm....


Will we be working with easy to use systems, which seamlessly integrate into our lives and are just part of society and life or will they still be items that you buy and use when you need a computer? Will we still be driving or with the computers drive better and smarter than us and get us around faster cheaper and safer?

How long will it be before you are asked how many processor core computer do you want and how many gigabytes of ram and terrabytes of harddrive space do you want?

Podcasts Worth Listening

I have distilled down my favorite list of podcasts to the top contenders.

Voices of Tomorrow - Flash Fiction brought to you every week, podcasts of stories from 365 Tomorrows.
Escape Pod - Science Fiction Podcast Magazine.
Cyberspeak - Two Former Federal Agents Talk About Computer Forensics, Network Security and Computer Crime.
Cory Doctrow's craphound.com - Podcast by Cory Doctrow, his stories and other content.
Geek Fu Action Grip - Mur Lafferty's podcast of stories and other content.
Nuketown Radio Active Podcast - Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Geekdom.

Computer Manages Restaurant Workers and Manna

Slashdot | Computer Manages Restaurant Workers was an interesting article and a wonderful link to a story I hadn't read before but found a very interesting and insightful story titled Manna by Marshall Brain.

I would wholely recommend taking the couple of hours and read the book Manna. Then taking a gander over at the article about Hyperactive Bob. With the best quote from the article being

Hopefully, no one will tell the makers of Hyperactive Bob about the Manna story; it has too many practical suggestions for the enslavement of humans.

That is just a great quote. When I was reading the Manna book online I was very impressed and I think it is on par with 1984 in dystopic quality.

Nuketown - Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Geekdom

Nuketown is a pretty cool site, and Kenneth Newquist has done a pretty good job on his Nuketown podcast as well.

Podcasts that I follow, Science Fiction, Tech news, and a bit more

I recently started listening to podcast a lot more, (since my commute increased to 1 hour each due to road construction). These are the list of podcasts that I follow and listen to on a regular basis.

World News

• Digital Planet -BBC News and Technology report
• Living on Earth
• Open Source - PRI Radio

Science News

• APM Future Tense - Public radio's daily journal for the digital age
• Current Science and Technology - at the Museum of Science, Boston
• Ockham's Razor - Presented by Robyn Williams
• Quirks & Quarks - CBC Radio
• Science Friday - Making Science Radioactive
• SETI Science and Skepticism
• Slacker Astronomy
• The RedShift report - Ontario Science Center
• Universe Today -Space and Astronomy News

Tech News

• Intellectual Icebergs - A Good Poke in the Brain
• GeekBrief.TV - Video Podcast with news about tech tools and toys.

Short Stories

• Escape Pod
• Escape Pod Classic
• Cory Doctrow's craphound.com
• Geek Fu Action Grip
• Scifi Friday

Gaming and tech talk

• roll2d6 - Adam and Nate talk about games, gaming and gamers
• Daily GizWiz - Giz(mo) Wiz(ard) Biz(ness)........a haven for gizmo and gadgets lovers!

Music and stuff

• Aural Icebergs - the music podcast companion to Intellectual Icebergs
• Random Signal - tangential transmissions from a disorganized mind
• Nuketown Radio Active Podcast - Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Geekdom.
• Thing a week - Jonathan Coulton

Radio Stories and news

• NPR: Most E-Mailed stories
• NPR: This I believe
• To the best of our knowledge

Other podcasts from comments

• StarDate
• Popular Science - with Jonathan Coulton

Intellectual Icebergs podcast

One podcast that I have really enjoyed since I found them is Intellectual Icebergs.

Intellectual Icebergs: helping to reveal the geek god inside of you!

I even got a brain from them just last week.... but I don't have a picture of it yet

Go check them out and enjoy their interesting and informational podcast